How to Navigate the Explosive Growth of Media Channels
I’m just about old enough to remember when the main sources of news, media, and entertainment came from just five TV channels. Since then, these sources have exploded and developed into a vast array of devices and services, ranging from smartphones to the ever-increasing subscription offerings from providers such as Netflix. The chart below sheds some light on the complexity of this space today and the overlaps between different areas.
As a consumer, this has made the media ecosystem difficult to navigate and incredibly expensive to access in full. As a marketer, it adds significant complexity in understanding how effectively you are reaching audiences and whether a channel provides incremental value compared to another. Today, TV advertising spend is on par with Video on Demand (VOD) due to the greater control it offers over audience targeting. Despite this shift, VOD providers often function as walled gardens, claiming to reach new audiences but lacking data to fully substantiate these claims.
VOD and streaming TV providers offer unique benefits, particularly newer entrants like Amazon Prime Video. Amazon provides many of the same targeting capabilities as other platforms but also has unparalleled access to customer data. Leveraging transactional history and personal information, Amazon’s segmentation capabilities could be considered second to none. This advantage is driving a significant shift in budgets towards these platforms compared to more traditional media buying methods. However, Linear TV and Out of Home (OOH) advertising still play a crucial role in building brand awareness. The key is to evaluate the overall impact holistically.
How Should Brands Ensure Their Campaigns Have Incremental Reach?
Reporting holistically remains a challenge for many brands. Working with a third party such as AudienceProject is essential to unify reporting across platforms. AudienceProject enables advertisers to track media performance across channels like YouTube, Meta, Amazon, and linear TV. This reporting is critical to a large-scale media campaign as it:
- Proves the value of a channel retrospectively, justifying whether future budget allocations should increase or decrease.
- Creates opportunities for real-time optimisation.
By collaborating with AudienceProject, brands can make informed decisions about their campaigns. They can assess channel overlap and calculate the cost associated with achieving incremental views of an ad. This enables advertisers to redirect budgets towards channels that deliver more incremental audiences at lower costs, thereby improving efficiency.
If you are planning a campaign across multiple channels, please get in touch today—we’re here to support you.
Joe Farley, Associate Director (Consultancy)
Image Source: Audience Project
